Rod Liddle: Trans twerps rewrite the facts of life, and even the Tories lap up their fiction

[TimeLady]

Share token for Rod's column in the Sunday Times

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/trans-twerps-rewrite-the-facts-of-life-and-even-the-tories-lap-up-their-fiction-pvl9p2br5?shareToken=358d56e57c162806b28fdd6bff4dd307]

Let's hope MPs, esp. Tory ones, are reading this.

Several posters seem to be using the Ben Shapiro tactic of framing the debate and shaming; by pretending to believe that discussing and article means you align your politics with the person who wrote it.

iii.thruhere.net/misc-files/how_to_debate_leftists_and_destroy_them.pdf

Rod Liddle offends everyone at some point.

He will flippantly label anything that is in is opinion absurd, often in an amusing manner, and also when he doesn't know much about it except he's read something and he thinks it's a crock of shit.

He's easily seen this trans thing for the crock of shit it is and is saying so. Amazingly he also sees that it is a dangerous crock of shit for women, even though he will also say when he thinks some feminists are talking a crock of shit.

If after all this trans debacle we cannot see that free speech above all else is sacrosanct, as without it we have very easily slipped into a oppressive thought control nightmare, then I'm not sure what level nightmare you will require to understand that you should be cheering from the rooftops every time you get to read a columnist you disagree with.

And I'm with Breastfeedingclownfish:
"I think it makes us look like reactionary right wingers)
What is this 'us' shit ocelot41? I don't know you or your politics and you don't know mine. And I couldn't give a fuck either.

Surely the point that people who are so opposed on so many things come together on this is part of our strength. Suggesting we can’t be on the same side as people who we consider to hold odious views is pushing towards ideological purity and is foolish.
Exactly.
The ability for people across the spectrum to say "we disagree fundamentally on so many things but for this cause we agree" is the sign of sensible debate and rational thought.

Much better than the hysterical blocking, echo chamber building and no platforming that the left seem to be in love with at the moment. I was talking to a friend about this and he was saying that he's very much old Labour left, but can't stand the way the left is carrying on with its no platforming and claims of literal violence. If I think someone has abhorrent views then they should have the right to speak and be challenged. Unfortunately the radical TRA bubble is all about shouting to adoring fans on social media and blocking anyone who doesn't give you a gold star and have their pronouns listed in their Twitter bio.

People need to develop the skill of being able to agree with and ascertain the truth regardless of who speaks it.

This absolutism of choosing your peer group first and then agreeing with EVERYTHING they say is what got us into this mess in the first place.

I am only 'aligned' with Liddle when I agree with his stance on this in the same way as I am aligned with him believing 2+2=4.

I'm able to disagree with a swathe of his beliefs simultaneously.

It's bullshit anyway.
The TRAs have an 'alignment' with some of the most disturbing people I've ever come across like Challenor Sr and Karen White and Karen Wood and this hasn't appeared to make a dent in their cause.

Rod Liddle is wrong about the innate inferiority of women, and right that people cannot change sex and also right that there is a shocking movement at work to criminalise truth right now.
It's pretty easy to play the ball, not the man.

I think it makes us look like reactionary right wingers. Speak for yourself, @ocelot41.

Rod Liddle is wrong about the innate inferiority of women

I doubt very much that he either thinks that or has said it.

Amazingly he also sees that it is a dangerous crock of shit for women, even though he will also say when he thinks some feminists are talking a crock of shit

Which happens.

I don’t know who Rod Liddell is but if he is communicating ‘our’ message to the people who don’t come on here, or won’t otherwise hear it more power to his elbow. We won’t get anywhere staying in our echo chamber.

We don’t have to agree with everything a person says in order to support what we do agree with.

Several posters seem to be using the Ben Shapiro tactic of framing the debate and shaming; by pretending to believe that discussing an article means you align your politics with the person who wrote it

I haven't read all of the article but this sentence is spot on This is why it is so comfortable to be on the left :that unearned sense of moral superiority

Paraphrasing lass given his crude and simplistic summary of how he is certain that girls and women are innately inferior in stem subjects because they got some extra funding and they're still not on a par in adulthood so this means it's biologically caused.

The man has done no analysis of any science. He imagines objections are all biased feminism rather than a criticism of lack of scientific method.

I'm sure he imagines we're innately superior at washing dishes and thus our crapness at physics is balanced out into equal but different.

I'd be more impressed if he ever actually tried to take a look at a science paper once in a while before making declarations on the
respective innate cognitive capacities of men and women.

I imagine he falls into the camp of believing men are from Mars and women are from Venus.

Just read the article. Hysterical. I’m on team Rod Liddle on this one. We have to be all calm, rational and reasonable but he can use sarcasm, ridicule and humour. Which is what is needed sometimes.

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.spectator.co.uk/2018/09/men-and-women-are-born-equal-but-different-deal-with-it/amp/

A lot of 'aptitude' and 'innate' going on here.
I appreciate he may want to dismiss a feminist analysis of this, but I think him a twit for dismissing any thought that it might be possible to use scientific method to get to the causes of the disparity better.

It is possible to interrogate your own opinions, and he doesn't.

He's too lazy in his thinking.

HRTFT but I think it's pretty good that he was all sneery at the start, as it makes his points more understandable to his audience when he finally puts the boot in. We need everyone sane to recognise what's going on and talk about it loudly. Some of those people will have values that 'don't align with ours', but will reach ordinary members of the public that won't listen to Posie. We need allies of all persuasions.

It is possible to interrogate your own opinions, and he doesn't

This is not aimed at you personally Barracker but that is richly ironic appearing on FWR.

Lots of men, including my DH and DF, read Rod Liddles column. They may not agree with everything he says either: it's obvious he can be provocative, satirical and a bit of an iconoclast. But he has a loyal readership - this will reach thousands. And I'm grateful to him for that. The more people that raise awareness the better.

Liddle is not putting forward an argument here he is simply stating facts. The TRA agenda is both ridiculous and dangerous- to women, to children and to freedom of speech.

Agreeing with Liddle on this is like agreeing with any reprehensible person that 2+2=4. He’s not “on our side”, he’s not saying anything we don’t already know but his column is not aimed at us.

There are a lot of people who will automatically disregard the voices of women but will listen to Liddle. If this means that they recognise the truth about the TRA agenda then I don’t care what kind of a shit Liddle is; it’s just not relevant because we’re not talking about his opinion we’re talking about the truth.

We should all interrogate our own opinions.
Not to the point of analysis paralysis.
But yes, does this make sense, what happens if I extrapolate this principle, am I making exceptions to the rule, do I believe this is universal, are there other explanations, other confounding factors, does my conclusion follow logically, is my premise sound, are there logical fallacies in my reasoning, have I fully understood the opposing viewpoint, can I counter points with clear refutations, is there evidence, am I making assertions that can be disproved, are they being disproved...

There comes a point when you've checked yourself enough and you move on.

But yes, I interrogate myself about this, because I care more about looking myself in the mirror than being seen to hold a popular view.

The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

To share dorms and loos and whatever else Girl Guides get up to on summer camps.

as we’ve all been saying, he makes the point well here that messing around may be consensual but it’s still a hell of a lot more risky when it’s m/f rather than f/f

The ‘whatever else Girl Guides get up to’ is most likely to be talking about starting periods, crushes they have and whatever school/friend gossip there is than anything sexual, I think.

Well I’ve never been a fan of Rod Liddle but I agree with everything he says. Balanced article and he gets it. He recognises the issues and he’s reaching a wide audience with his viewpoint. Good for him.

Think it depends on the Guides Katara.

Personally while we discussed periods in school they weren’t a huge thing amongst the girls I knew. It was all sex sex sex for us as teens.

There are many people I dislike and strongly disagree with their general opinions

But sometimes they might say/write something I agree with (that’s have populism politics works - obviously he isn’t a politician)

And this is one of the times I do agree with him - it isn’t the first time he has addressed the ridiculousness of the Trans debates

He's provocative and will always divide opinion -that's what he does. I'm not a huge fan but I'm glad he's using his platform to air this issue.

When he was on BBC's Question Time a few months ago he was the ONLY panelist to disagree on the subject of trans rights. Everyone else, including the women, gave mealy mouthed arguments in favour of increased access for self id-ing trans people. He alone said: 'Well I'm with the feminists on this one.'

I agree with Paris Lees on Brexit and on the lack of representation of working class commentators in the media

I agree with Jeremy Clarkson that some pro-cycling campaigners are a bit up their own backsides and holier than thou

I agree with Katie Hopkins that some people give their children utterly ridiculous names

The only way we are going to get out of the complete clusterfuck we are in as a society is by rejecting the notions that:
a) it is not the message itself but the messenger that must be scrutinized
b) there is a hierarchy of who is allowed to speak on certain issues
c) we should all conform to a particular set of beliefs just because we hold one idea in common
Rod Liddle is correct. He lays out the issues clearly to an audience that is not Mumsnet or gender-critical Twitter. A HUGE problem is that a lot of men, or politically "right-wing" or even "centrist" women see this as just leftist infighting, and stay on the sidelines bemusedly munching popcorn thinking this has nothing to do with them. It's one of the biggest obstacles we have, that people do not get involved because they think it is only radical feminist lesbians shouting at trans activists. They do not understand that most of this is just ordinary women from all walks of life who have gone "What the actual fuck is going on?" Women who have woken up, and started listening to the feminists that have been warning about this for ages. Most of this is just normal women trying to do something to stop the madness of pretending biological sex is irrelevant.
The truth is that this issue affects EVERYONE who cares about the definition of the words "woman" and "man," being able to speak freely about biology, and having facilities separated by sex.
Self-ID is currently a policy being pushed by the Conservative Government and has cross-party support despite very little public support or awareness of the actual issues at hand!
We need everyone to wake up and smell the coffee, and every single person who is disagreeing with the "Trans taliban," as Mr Liddle put it in another column, to start talking about this, to look at the Stonewall umbrella, to ask questions from their local organisations and to fill out the consultation with their objections.
We need them to do it NOW.
I am beyond the point of caring about the optics from the trans activists' point of view, because they will smear us no matter what. We have the majority of the population onside against self-ID, so of course they won't all be ex-Guardian readers.
This is not about left/right or purity politics.
This is not even only about women's rights, even though it is mainly concerned women who are pointing out the Emperor's nakedness.
This is about the fundamental liberty of freedom of speech and whether we can state the truth (which is why Posie is so effective by pointing it out).
This is about the 82% of people who think trans activist demands are nonsense saying so.
It's not just a feminist issue, it's an EVERYONE issue.
So I, for one, will thank Rod for putting aside his disagreements with feminists and writing about this. Potentially even using "T*RF" in a way might be a good thing because it leads you to the women who have really analyzed what's going on and are speaking up on this when you Google it.